Moscow court to select murder trial jurors

Last Wednesday, the court extended custody for the defendants by six months, and ruled on jury trial

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MOSCOW, October 11 (Itar-Tass) — The Moscow City Court on Tuesday will select 12 jurors and at least two alternates to review the criminal case over the murder of Spartak fan Yuri Volkov in central Moscow in the summer of 2010.

Last Wednesday, the court extended custody for the defendants by six months, and ruled on jury trial.

The trial will be open.

At the Wednesday hearing, Maxim Domnitsky, an injured party, stated that defendant Akhmedpasha Aidayev had threatened him. "I'm against their being released from custody, as Aidayev has been threatening me," he told the court.

Earlier, all the suspects were checked on polygraph. "I can tell that the results of the polygraph tests are not in the defendants' favor," a lawyer told Tass.

Yuri Volkov, 22, was killed in a fight in central Moscow on July 10, 2010. The investigators said two groups of youngsters, numbering three and eight people, clashed in the Chistye Prudy area. The fight was motivated by "personal dislike," the police said.

Volkov was fatally stabbed and died in an ambulance. Another two persons were hospitalized.

Charges were brought against two Chechnya natives: Akhmedpasha Aidayev (who is accused of murder) and Bekkhan Ibragimov (accused of hooliganism and malicious infliction of harm to health). Both deny their guilt saying Spartak fans had dragged them into the fight and that they had had no knives.

At present, the Moscow City Court reviews a similar case over the murder of Spartak fan Yegor Sviridov on December 6, 2010. That crime caused a public outcry and resulted in mass disturbances in Moscow's Manezhnaya Square and other areas of the city.